Click.
Captured are my eyes,
foggy windows hiding a soul that is bruised.
Click.
Captured is the mole on my right breast,
a secret marking no one sees.
Click.
Captured is a scar cut across my forehead
a memory of falling down to the hard earth.
Click.
Captured is my hair
a veil that falls over my face to create a shadow of what you see.
Click.
This is me.
All of me.
Open.
Exposed.
I stand in front of you with nothing
to hide.
Posted By: Your Present Self
[Saturday, November 9, 11:04 AM]
Chapter 39
I woke with a start as if I’d been dreaming I was falling. Only, unlike a dream where you wake before you hit the ground, the realization of what I did last night slammed into me harder than any ten-story fall.
This was why I didn’t like to drink. Drinking made you do stupid, awful things you regretted in the morning. My head was foggy and I felt sick, but I crawled over to where Ali was still sleeping and shook her. “Where’s your camera?”
She rolled over and groaned but didn’t answer.
I poked her hard so she’d open her eyes. “Your camera. I need it.”
“It’s on the table.”
I moved toward it.
“But if you want to send your picture to Jack, don’t worry. I already did.”
I froze. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I sent it to him before we went to bed. He probably had some pretty hot dreams last night. I bet if you check your phone, you’ll have a message from him.”
I pulled my phone out from under my pillow and held it. But I couldn’t bring myself to look and see what Jack said. I knew he would want the picture, but it wasn’t me. I clutched the phone and turned to Ali. “I can’t believe you sent my picture. I never told you that you could.”
Ali laughed, which made me angrier.
“This isn’t funny,” I shouted.
Jenna rolled over and opened her eyes. “Shut up,” she said, tossing a pillow at me. “Some of us are still sleeping.”
I was shaking. I couldn’t believe Ali thought this was funny. “You sent Jack a naked picture of me.”
“Relax. Calm down. I’m joking. I didn’t send the picture.”
“You didn’t?” I lay on my back and waited for my heart to stop racing.
“I didn’t. Geez, you went psycho. It’s only a picture.”
“Will you erase it? I can’t send it to him.”
“Yes, relax. I’ll get rid of it. Jack will have to be content with looking at your boobs in real life.”
Jenna crawled out of her sleeping bag. “Why are you talking about boobs?”
“Don’t worry,” Ali said, waving a hand. “It’s
nothing.”
Jenna rolled back over.
I allowed myself to relax. “Ali?”
“Yeah?” She sounded annoyed.
“You promise to get rid of the picture?”
“I promise.”
I had no reason not to believe her.
www.allmytruths.com
Today’s Truth:
One word can mean more than any other word you have ever said in your life.
Jack has some new favorite words:
Sex
Please
Come on
Want
Need, need, need.
He says these words over and over again like a two-year-old
who wants something
and only knows how to get it by grabbing, taking, and repeating its name.
Jack practices these new words everywhere:
In my bedroom
In cryptic messages sent to my cell phone
On the couch in my living room
During conversations whispered late into the night before we hang up to sleep
Outside against the side of a house at a party
As his hand slides up my back at lunch
In the empty gym when it is pouring out and we wait for the rain to slow
At the movies in the dark row on the side of the theater
In folded notes he passes to me in the hallway
And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere else.
Jack has become a pro at saying these words,
and I let him practice.
I listen to him say them over and over again,
and I try out words of my own:
Wait
Stop
Not Ready
Go Slow
Scared, scared, scared.
I say my words
over and over
and he says his words
over and over
until we say them so many times they don’t feel
different.
They become heavy, bloated, saturated,
Unnecessary.
And so, I learn a new word:
Yes.
Posted By: Your Present Self
[Wednesday, November 13, 1:14 AM]
Chapter 40
I said yes to Jack the week before Thanksgiving in his basement after a game.
Jack was high on a sixteen-point win. He’d played the entire second period. Dad didn’t put any other sophomore in for more than five minutes. The success of the game got people talking about Beacon’s chances at going to the play-offs, and everyone was buzzed by the prospect.
Jack wanted to watch the video footage of his time on the court. He claimed it was all a blur to him. Dad, also in a great mood, agreed to let him borrow it. Jack put it in the DVD player, and we settled onto one of the mammoth couches that were so comfy they always made me want to fall asleep.
Jack chewed on his bottom lip as he fast-forwarded to the part in the video where he was called into the game.
“There I am,” Jack said softly.
I didn’t watch the TV. Instead, I watched Jack’s face. He stared at the screen, his eyes wide. I watched as the game played out for him and realized he wasn’t watching himself with pride as some of the other players might. It looked like he couldn’t believe that was him on the screen.
When the game ended, he turned to me, shaking his head slowly. “I got to play in that.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “It was pretty cool.”
“It’s incredible.”
It was incredible. All of it: Jack, me, Beacon, what my life had become. Two years ago I’d watched Mom die and Dad shut down. I’d given up basketball. A year ago, if you asked me where I’d be, I wouldn’t have believed any of this. I didn’t think I could move forward back then, and now, here I was with Jack, the two of us together.
I’m not sure who moved toward the other first, but suddenly we were kissing and not the kissing we usually did where Jack pulled at me, begged me, or tried to take from me. This was slow, almost as if it were the first kiss or maybe the last and we needed to memorize it all.
Jack trailed his hand down the side of my face, his eyes locked on mine. I didn’t look away as I often did, shy and self-conscious. Instead, I took it all in, everything, and when Jack continued to kiss me slowly, moving lower and lower, I didn’t stop him. He pulled at my jeans, and I held my hips up slightly so he could slide them off of me. He paused as we lay there and asked if he should keep going. His eyes were clear and honest.
I said yes.
And so he did.
And so we did.
Chapter 41
“I want to enlist,” my brother Brett announced the next night at dinner, seemingly out of the blue. I later learned the words had been dangling on his lips for months, already spoken to everyone around him: Uncle John, Julia, the guidance counselor, the history teacher, and the recruitment department four blocks from our house. These words had been uttered to everyone. Everyone except Dad and me.
I paused, the spaghetti
dangling off my fork, threatening to fall back onto my plate. “Enlist? Enlist for what?”
The six o’clock news continued behind Brett, a brown–haired woman telling the viewers about a massive thunderstorm heading our way, complete with heavy winds and damaging hail.
“I want to enlist in the Army,” my brother said, looking Dad straight in the eye.
“The Army . . .” Dad said slowly. He blinked, waiting for Brett to respond.
“You’re crazy. They’ll ship you off to war.” My heart pounded. He couldn’t be serious. Why would he want to put himself somewhere dangerous?
“Well, I don’t want to enlist,” Brett said, ignoring me. “I’m going to enlist. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Before you made me go to Beacon, the recruiting officer at Olmstead High was helping me.”
“When did this ever become an option?” Dad said. “I always thought your interest in the military was just for fun.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. My interest is what I want to do with my life. I’ve been talking to Uncle John about it for a while now. He thinks it’s a great idea.”
“Uncle John? What kind of rubbish has he been filling your head with?”
“It’s not rubbish. It’s what I want to do. If you weren’t so busy with everyone on your team, maybe you would have noticed what your own son was
interested in.”
Dad wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been paying attention to Brett. This was all a surprise to me also. Sure, Brett used to beg Uncle John to tell him stories about his days in the Army the minute he walked in our door, and he was always watching those war movies where things blew up all over the place, but I never thought this was something he personally wanted to do. Enlisting was a big deal. The thought surprised me as much as it terrified me.
“You will not enlist,” Dad commanded, interrupting my thoughts.
I bit my bottom lip, forcing myself to stay quiet even though I wanted to get up, shake Brett, and yell at him.
Dad gripped his fork, the tines pressed into the table. I don’t think he knew what he was doing,
because he seemed so angry.
I didn’t want to get in the middle of another fight, so I kept my eyes on the radars on the screen, big blobs of green and yellow floating behind the weather woman’s body, slowly moving closer and closer to our house.
“I’m eighteen, Dad,” Brett said. “I don’t need your permission.” He looked in Dad’s eyes, holding his gaze, but I could tell from the slight shaking of his hands that he was scared.
My leg itched, an intense itching that got worse when I thought about it, but I didn’t want to scratch. I didn’t want to make any movements that would remind Dad I was still in the room and potentially cause him to tell me to leave.
“We’re not having this conversation, Brett. You’re not going to enlist in the Army. The Army is a parasite designed to prey on boys who have no other options. You go to Beacon; you have the whole world in front of you.”
“What are you talking about? The whole world in front of me?” My brother kept his voice even, calm.
It was obvious nothing Dad said would change his mind, and that scared me. I was horrified at the thought of Brett joining the Army.
“You, Brett, are not the type of person who goes into the Army. The Army is for boys who can’t get into college. The Army is for boys who aren’t responsible enough to make something of themselves in school, to work hard.” Dad was on a roll, spewing out the kind of speech only the privileged could make. A speech for people who would never consider an option like the Army.
Dad’s voice only grew louder. “It’s a last resort for kids who have spent their whole lives messing up. They fill you with promises to make a man out of you, when what they’re really doing is targeting those boys at the bottom. Boys who have messed things up so bad they have no other option.”
Brett broke his gaze with Dad and put his head down. When he brought it back up, his voice was strong and steady. “I am one of those boys, Dad. You’ve said yourself I don’t have the grades to get into a good college. I don’t have any talents or athletic abilities. And every time I start to forget these things, one of your players is more than willing to remind me of what a waste I am. I’m graduating in less than seven months with grades just above failing, a grade point average that’s probably not even good enough to get me into a community college, and no one knows where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do after I graduate. If I’m not one of those boys, then who am I?”
When Dad didn’t respond, Brett pushed his chair back and left the room.
Chapter 42
Brett signed his papers the day Beacon won their thirteenth straight game, a win that had gotten the media talking about championships, attaching Dad’s name to all their predictions.
It was an away game, and Brett had promised Dad he’d come watch. They’d had some kind of secret talk the other night in Dad’s office, and when they both walked out in good moods, I’d thought I could let go of my fears about Brett enlisting.
It wasn’t until I headed back on the team bus with Jack, who was drunk on the win, that I realized Brett had never showed up. I watched Dad at the front of the bus, joking with the assistant coaches, and wondered if he’d also noticed Brett’s absence. Dad would be upset he hadn’t come. Dad was all about getting us to go to the games to help complete the happy family image he wanted to portray to the Beacon community.
When we got home, the kitchen light was on.
Dad unlocked the door, and in an unusually good mood, continued to talk to me, reliving the glories of the past day.
I followed him into the kitchen, where he looked at the pile of papers on our dinner table, the light
illuminating a bright orange Post-it.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, his mood shifting abruptly.
“What?” I tried to get a look at the pages Dad was now sifting through. The top one had a date circled in red. “What are those?”
“Your brother signed his papers for the Army.”
Dad threw the documents onto the table.
I grabbed them, focusing on the words scrawled on the Post-it: “I’m out celebrating with Julia. You can congratulate me later.”
“He signed papers?” I flipped through the documents and tried to make sense of them. I couldn’t believe Brett had enlisted without Dad’s approval. “Didn’t you two make up? I thought you talked him out of it. Why would he do this?”
“Because your brother doesn’t think about how dangerous this can be.” He slammed a fist on the table. For a man who, a few minutes ago, was celebrating a big win, he looked completely defeated. “God damn it, doesn’t he realize he’s going to kill himself over there?” He walked out of the room.
The door to his office banged shut.
I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. I sat and tried to read the papers through watery eyes. I wanted to make sense of what was going on, but it was impossible to focus on the page. All I could think about was what Dad said before he left the room. Brett was doing something that could kill him, and now that he’d signed the papers, neither of us could do anything to stop him.
Chapter 43
Brett came home late that night. The door opened and closed downstairs, and footsteps hurried up the stairs. I waited for Dad to come out and say something to Brett, but the house remained quiet.
I spent the morning in my room staring at the wall, trying to wrap my mind around what Brett had done. My heart started to race every time I let my thoughts settle on everything for a moment, and I was overwhelmed at the thought of how much danger Brett was placing himself in. I didn’t move for what felt like hours, watching the sky grow from dim to light. The game yesterday seemed so far away I couldn’t even remember being happy and cheering the team on.
I needed to talk to Brett. Things might have sucked between us, but what he had done was major. I couldn’t ignore his decision.
I knocked on his door and
got no response. All I heard was the low hum of music too quiet to identify.
I pounded.
“Go away,” he said.
“Please, Brett, can I talk to you about this?”
“There isn’t anything to discuss.”
“There are a million things to discuss. Starting with, this isn’t a good idea.”
“I really don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what’s a good idea and what isn’t. You haven’t exactly been my biggest supporter lately.”
“I don’t understand how to support this decision.”
“You don’t need to. The choice has been made. Just leave me alone.”
“That’s not fair.”
There was movement on the other side of the door, and I thought he was going to let me in.
I was wrong. Music started to blast, and the bass thumped so hard he wouldn’t hear me no matter how loud I yelled.
I kicked the door and then headed downstairs.
How had my family gotten here? We were never a family of secrets before, and now it seemed as if we were all hiding things.
I hung out in the family room all day waiting for Brett to finally leave his room, but it never happened. It wasn’t until a horn beeped outside that I remembered Jack and I had planned to go to dinner.
Jack continued to beep his horn even when I flashed the front lights to let him know I was
coming. When I was close to his car, he laid on the horn so it wouldn’t stop.
I yanked open the door. “Jack, cool it. You don’t want my dad to come out.”
“I can handle your dad. He loves me.” Jack pulled me the rest of the way into the car, his hands quickly finding their way up the back of my shirt. “Your dad isn’t the only one who loves me.”
“Cool it, Jack, you don’t have to jump on me the minute I get into the car.”
He held on, and I tried to get away. His elbow slammed into the horn, and the blast made us
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